


If Shadows Are Ghosts

by kingdomfaraway



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Death, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:29:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdomfaraway/pseuds/kingdomfaraway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They become caterpillars carving up the country side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Shadows Are Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the first season, written before right after the season 2 premier.

It's been a million miles and a million hunts since Dad died. They drive without a destination for what seems like days. They stop only to hunt and eat, they sleep in the confines of the Impala like they did as kids. Sam lays across the back seats, too big to fit comfortable but he sleeps when Dean drives. He speeds past the trees and houses, blurred and nameless population signs and towns. They talk to locals and old friends as if they had a mission and a plan, but it's the truth that they don't. They only have a shadow of a man standing behind them at every turn. It's what he would have wanted from them, for them to continue, to drive until they find their ends like he had.

The trail for the Demon goes cold almost a month after he dies. There is no new. There are no signs. That's nothing but a creepy feeling that Dad died in vain for a cause they'll never succeed in. He died for them and they do nothing in return but crawl along the country getting rid of poltergeists and minor annoyances. There is no more talk of going back to a normal life for either of them. The Demon has forever marked them with the curse of wandering. The curse of always having a mission stapled into the back of their minds. There father will always be dead and the Demon will always be out there somewhere, waiting to take what else he can from them.

It's not so much of their Father's ghost that haunts them. It's something deeper that's dug into their skins and sleeps beneath it, surfacing in moments of silent and dreams. Sometimes when Sam's reading, he'll see fleeting but distinctly human shape of a shadow pass quickly over the far wall and disappear into nothing. It leaves him with a sick and dull feeling at the pit of his stomach. Dean sees him when he's driving, a shadow that drifts by the side of the road, stretches over the gravel cutting off the lights of the street lamp. The vision, quick and behind him, only makes Dean drive harder and faster.

They become caterpillars carving up the country side. They make signs and messages out of whisperers of fire and sudden deaths, of weather changes and animal deaths. Scribble stories and names in Dad's brown leather journal, that starts falling apart at the seems. They pretend they've found a trace, but it's nothing more than smoke and mirrors. An underlying hope that they'll find the Demon and seek their much craved revenge. The trail is cold and only grows colder, so. They hold silent conversations about what to do, in looks and movements. They don't talk about Dad, the name becomes foreign to their tongues. They unknowingly end conversations with "yes sir" and "no sir" becoming the prefect sons they never could have before.

Whether it's their Dad or the Demon that drives them is another thought lost on the road side. They are one in each other now, the Demon has consumed their Dad, the figures lurk together in shadows against the walls.

A year melts into the country side into stories of children's parents sent up into flames and they keep going. Becoming scared of shadows that could be Demons or their Dad, watching them and holding them into their places. The feelings driving them down, wearing them out like tires on the screeching asphalt. Leaving empty shells of young men dying to find an answer. There is no glory in what they do. The lives they save blur into miles on the road. They aren't even heroes in their own stories, just nameless and faceless symbols of love, glory and heroism. The glory they seek is long forgotten and distorted in flames.

The Demon has won, whatever prize he had been craving for. They have become what their father had trained them, had modeled them into begin, the pawn the Demon had used so well, to teach them and create them. What the Demon had begun and then came back to finish. They are only wondering solders, marching in battles, scared only of shadows that linger too long in dark corners.


End file.
